I am a MA/MBA candidate at the Lauder Institute and the Wharton School of Business. I focus on Russian politics, economics, and demography but also write more generally about Eastern Europe. Please note that all opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone and that I do not speak in an official capacity for Lauder, Wharton, Forbes, or any other organization.
I do my best to inject hard numbers (and flashy Excel charts) into conversations and debates that are too frequently driven by anecdotes. In addition to Forbes I've written for True/Slant, INOSMI, Salon, the National Interest, The Moscow Times, Russia Magazine, the Washington Post, and Quartz.
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Vladimir Putin's Approval Rate Is Still (Mostly) Holding Steady

Before the Levada Center is shut down, it seems worth highlighting their outstanding work in tracking Vladimir Putin’s approval rate. Levada regularly publishes a poll on Russians approval or disapproval of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medevedev, and puts the poll results in a convenient and easily accessible format. In April 2013, 63% of Russians indicated that they approved of the job Putin was doing as president. 63% is hardly overawing, but is a figure that’s broadly in line with recent months and is the exact same level of support that Putin enjoyed in December of 2011.

It’s true that when you view the entire history of polling since 2000 it seems overwhelmingly likely that Putin’s numbers will continue to tick downward: the negative trend since the end of 2010 is impossible to miss or to explain away. Anyone who’s not a bought and paid for Kremlin shill can look at that graph and immediately understand 1) that Putin’s popularity is substantially weaker than it used to be and 2) that there will be no going back to those halcyon oil boom days when his approval rating often ticked into Kim Jong-Il territory. I’m dating myself, but I actually remember when people used to contemptuously discount Levada’s polls, which have always been scrupulous and carefully done, because they showed Putin at 90% approval, a figure which “everyone knew” was impossible.

As the experience of the past year and a half ought to remind us, for Vladimir Putin “being weaker than before” does not equal “being in free fall.” I’ve lost count of the number of editorials and news stories that talk about “Putin’s swiftly falling poll numbers” or the “growing number of Russians who oppose him.” The Washington Post, as always, was the very font of conventional wisdom when it noted in a recent editorial that “Russian resistance to Mr. Putin’s autocracy steadily grows.” That, in a nutshell, is the bipartisan consensus: that Putin is growing weaker by the day, and that the opposition to him is, right this very moment, gaining new strength.

But the support, or lack thereof, of a politician like Putin isn’t a contentious philosophical debate like “how does one lead a righteous life?” “How many Russians support Vladimir Putin” is a surprisingly easy question to answer (well, so long as high quality pollsters such as Levada continue to operate). As a simple factual matter, the number of Russians opposing Putin and the number of Russians supporting him have been remarkably steady for the past year and a half. We might want more Russians to oppose Putin, we might hope that his poll numbers are in relentless decline, and it is arguably the case that Putin’s numbers should be heading downward at a more rapid rate, but they’re not. Reality has an annoying habit of confounding simplistic narratives, and the “Putin is steadily losing support” thesis just doesn’t fit the numbers.

Will such a situation continue indefinitely? No. At some point Putin’s level of support will go up or (far more likely) down. But if you’re attempting to set policy towards Russia, or even if you’re just moderately curious as to what’s going on in the country, you have to be aware of what is actually taking place, not what might or might not happen at some point in the future. And in reality, at the present time, Putin’s poll numbers aren’t in some sort of dramatic free fall but are actually in stasis. Interpretations of that fact can differ greatly, personally I’d say it shows that the strategy of “wait for Russia to collapse” isn’t a terribly good one while others will come to very different conclusions, but Putin’s (mostly) stable approval rating has to be the starting point for any debate. This is not because it flatters my own ideological conceits but because it is true.

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At last Mark Adomanis spew out the truth that nobody in the west want to hear especially anti-Russian lobby on Washington.

For one the acknowledgement of this truth will mean the complete failure of Hillary Clinton’s anti-Russian crusade and Obama’s reset

For two it would also require to re-think and re-consider the US approach to Russia as a whole, which US is completely unprepared and unfit to do.

However , until US start using the facts about Russia instead of lies conveniently supplied by all kind of Russian immigrants (who will do and say for money whatever US wants to hear about Russia – anything but the truth) US will continue to misjudge and miscalculate Russia and lose as a result as it is doing today . The information war of lies against Russia that US started in 2011 is coming back to bite the master.